Mistaken for Transformed

Being a shapeshifter can be hard on your friends, especially once you get a reputation for transforming unannounced. Consequently, on occasions when you aren't in plain sight, it's not uncommon for people who've known and loved you your entire life to to walk up to guests, household pets, or even furniture and — in all seriousness — ask, "Bob, is that you?"

It's even worse for characters who know that people can be transformed as well; after finding enough examples of Forced Transformations, how can anyone be sure that the neighborhood witch hasn't paid a visit and turned yet another beloved friend or relative into a car? Should anyone go missing, the only option available is to frantically start querying just about anything in the dim hope that they might be the AWOL acquaintance.

And occasionally, you get cases in which these misunderstandings occur not because of past experience with shapeshifters or transmogrification, but simply because the observer is just really, really stupid.

Essentially the supernatural equivalent of Mistaken for an Imposter, this is a trope common to settings where Voluntary Shapeshifting, Transformation Rays, The Transmogrifier, powerful illusionism, or adaptive camouflage are realities. Often played for comedy, it can be played for drama or even for horror in the case of less-friendly shapeshifters who might actually want to harm the searchers, who will grow more and more nervous around seemingly innocent animals or objects as the tension escalates. In more dramatic instances where both the heroes and the villains have shapeshifters or transformed characters in their ranks, it's also possible for friendly polymorphs to be mistaken for the villains — or vice versa — with frightening results.

A common outcome when dealing with the Shapeshifting Trickster.

Contrast Mistaken for Own Murderer, where a character really did transform (or they disguised themselves) and are mistaken for having killed their original form.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• +Anima: In one arc, the kids hear rumors of a noble who became a bee +Anima and ended up completely transforming into a man-eating bee monster, a form Cooro meets up close and personal after the noble's mother, Lady Beena, seemingly lures him into the mansion to feed him to it. It turns out that the monster was neither a +Anima, a man-eater, nor Lady Beena's son at all — he had found a mysterious egg in the manor and left it in the care of one of his servants while he went to contact the nearest research facility. Unfortunately, after the egg hatched and the giant bee grew up quickly on a diet of honey, the servants fled from the manor in fear... neglecting to tell anyone about it before doing so.
• In the original manga of Doraemon: Nobita's Dorabian Nights, the villain Abdil steals Sinbad's chest of magic beads, which can be transformed into enchanted soldiers. When Doraemon and gang tries helping Sinbad retrieve his artifacts, Doraemon drinks a shapeshifting potion transforming himself into Abdil to retrieve the chest, leading to Abdil sounding an alarm that there's an imposter posing as him. Cue Abdil's minions, Cassim and two other mooks, beating up Abdil... and suddenly realizing they're kicking the snot out of the real deal.
• Fairy Tail: When Future Lucy first reveals herself to the rescue team in the underground dungeon, she gets subjected to Mistaken Identity, with Yukino specifically thinking that Future Lucy is actually Gemini disguised as Lucy through transformation magic.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: After getting trapped inside Gluttony's stomach, Ed and Ling remember that Envy was sucked in as well and start wondering if either of them is the homunculus in disguise. Luckily, they're able to prove their identities to each other.
• My Hero Academia Smash!!: In one strip, after the students learn Aizawa was lying about expelling someone, they become extremely paranoid. They spot a cat nearby they declare has been staring at them for too long and assume it's Aizawa. Cut to Midnight waiting for them to show up for their lesson and being informed by Monoma that he saw an entire class chasing after a cat, much to the teacher's confusion.
• Ranma ½:
  • In the Ryōga Hibiki Intro Arc, after some hints, Ranma realizes that his childhood friend/rival is the recipient of a transforming Jusenkyō curse... but because Ryōga has transformed out of Ranma's sight, Ranma initially believes that a neighbor's dog is Ryōga's cursed form.
  • Ranma is accosted by his childhood friend Ukyō (whom his dad has swindled years ago), and accidentally touches her breast while they're fighting. Since Ranma had always thought that Ukyō was a boy, he assumes that she has the same Jusenkyō curse as him and tries to transform her back into a guy by pouring hot water on her.

Comic Books

• A few examples appear in the licensed comics of The Loud House:
  • In one issue, Leni sees a mannequin who looks just like her older sister, Lori. Because Leni isn't very smart, she then thinks the mannequin is Lori, having been turned into a mannequin.
  • In "The Missing Linc", Lynn is searching for her brother Lincoln but finds a frisbee instead. Leni, who was nearby, says, "So Lincoln is a frisbee now?".

Fan Works

• Naru-Hina Chronicles Mini-sodes: Hanabi pulls a prank by claiming to Hiashi that Hinata and Naruto had a baby together (when in reality they were simply babysitting Kurenai's baby). Later on, she comes across her father and thinks it's actually Naruto pulling a prank on her (who transformed into Hiashi to pull a prank on her in a previous Mini-sode) as a revenge for her own prank. She then starts insulting Hiashi right in front of him, only to realize her mistake when the real Naruto appears nearby.

Films — Animation

• Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie: In the third act of the film, Lumpy gets trapped inside the Tree of Terror in the forest and when Roo was unable to find him, he ends up coming across a jack o' lantern in his likeness. Remembering Tigger's story about a creature called the Gobloon who turns anyone he catches into a jack o' lantern, Roo is led to believe Lumpy was transformed into one by the Gobloon and shows his friends, who promptly freak out.
• The Rugrats Movie: The babies get lost in the forest when they attempt to take Dil, Tommy's newborn brother, back to the hospital in the Reptar Wagon. As they try to make their way to the ranger station, believing it to be the house of a wizard who can take them home, they come across a derailed train car filled with a troupe of circus monkeys. At one point, the monkeys take the diaper bag, and while Tommy tries to get it back, he leaves Chuckie, Phil, and Lil to look after Dil. The monkeys take Dil, and Chuckie, Phil, and Lil leave a baby monkey in Dil's place when Tommy returns. When Tommy sees the baby monkey, he thinks that Dil turned into a monkey, and decides to use the wizard's wish to turn Dil back into a human baby, at the risk of him and his friends still being lost in the forest. Lil and Chuckie spill the beans that the monkeys took Dil, so Tommy sets off to find him on his own, as Chuckie, Phil, and Lil all refuse to help him, the former two seeing Dil as a nuisance, and the latter reminding Tommy of all the times throughout the movie he didn't help him (because at those times, Dil needed his attention).
• Exploited in Shrek 2: Fiona learns Shrek has been turned human by a potion... but because she doesn't know what the new Shrek actually looks like, she's soon duped by Prince Charming into believing that he's Shrek.
• The Swan Princess: After Prince Derek finally figures out King William's dying description of the thing that attacked him and took Princess Odette ("a great animal... not what it seems...") means it was a transforming animal, he goes out on its hunt. Of course, lacking any additional clues, he sees a swan and instantly assumes that it must be the Great Animal and tries to kill it, not knowing that the swan is a cursed Princess Odette.

Films — Live-Action

• As with the original Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast features the Beast's servants having been magically transformed into animated objects; as a result, Belle is briefly left under the impression that literally every object in the castle is an enchanted servant, and actually asks a hairbrush its name. Cue Facepalm from Lumiere as Cogsworth explains that it's just an ordinary brush.
• Eames of Inception has the power to shapeshift in dreams, allowing him to impersonate Peter Browning in order to get information from Robert Fischer during the first level. In the second level, when Saito bumps into a projection of Browning, he assumes he's actually Eames in disguise and greets him - only for the real Eames to appear from around the corner and silently warn him off. Catching on instantly, Saito sheepishly backs away, claiming to have mistaken Browning for someone else.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Thor: Ragnarok, Loki is unexpectedly teleported off the street by Doctor Strange, leaving behind a business card with directions to the Sanctum Sanctorum. Not understanding what just happened, Thor believes that Loki has used his powers of illusion to disguise himself as the card, and pokes it with his umbrella in confusion.
  • Avengers: Endgame: During the journey back to 2012 to retrieve the Space, Mind, and Time Stones, 2023 Captain America gets mistaken for a recently-escaped Loki by 2012 Cap — no thanks to Loki himself having earlier assumed 2012 Cap's form just to mess with his foes. The result is a fight for Loki's Scepter that ends with 2023 Cap knocking his past self out.
  • In Spider-Man: No Way Home, when Ned learns how many of the multiversal villains captured in the Sanctum Sanctorum were formerly ordinary humans, he nervously asks if a random tree, which had been accidentally teleported into the Sanctum during Spider-Man's effort to capture the villains, might also be some sort of tree-themed villain as well.
    Electro: It's just a tree, man. Just a tree.
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?: Played for Laughs when the escaped convicts wake up after drinking with some strange women by the river, find Pete gone and a toad in his abandoned clothes, and jump to the conclusion that he was transformed. They keep the toad for a while before finding out that the women actually sold Pete to the police.
  Delmar: Them si-reens did this to Pete! They loved him up and turned him into a h-horny toad!

Literature

• The Bartimaeus Trilogy: In The Golem's Eye, during a meeting on what to do about the Golem currently rampaging through London, Bartimaeus compliments what he thinks is a fellow demon shapeshifter into a footstool for his creativity in choosing a form. He is quickly informed that he is talking to an actual footstool, much to his surprise.
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: While in the countryside, Sandy sees some pigs in a sty and insists that they're princesses transformed by magic and the swineherds are the ogres who've captured them. Hank, who sees he's not getting anywhere by telling her the truth, solves the problem by buying the pigs (out of sight of Sandy) far more than they're worth, so the swineherds will have something left over after the taxmen come.
• Dirty Bertie: Invoked in one story, in which Bertie gets a magician's kit and uses it to attempt to turn his friend Eugene into a worm. Eugene pranks Bertie by changing his clothes, putting a worm on top of his old clothes, and leaving, so that Bertie would think he really did turn into a worm.
• Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Early in Dealing with Dragons, Princess Cimorene meets a talking frog and, because of his ability to speak, briefly thinks said frog might be an enchanted prince. He's not, but he's "met a couple of them, and after a while you pick up a few things."
• In one story in Emil of Lönneberga by Astrid Lindgren, Emil is missing. His little sister, Ida, heard a song about a woman who turned into a bird and flew up to Heaven, so when she sees a chicken, she mistakes it for her brother and says, "Please don't fly up to Heaven!"
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: At the beginning of the novel, Bellatrix kills a fox after mistaking it for a wizard with a fox Animagi form.
• Played for drama in the conclusion of Ron Goulart's short story Subject to Change: here, a woman with the power to shapeshift ends up in an argument with her husband and transforms into a perfect replica of her sofa in order to avoid conversation. Unfortunately, a fire breaks out in the building and her husband has only enough time to save one of the two sofas - and he has no way of knowing if he's rescued his wife or an ordinary chair.

Live-Action TV

• 2point4 Children: In "Carry On Screaming", Ben is led to believe that he's a werewolf and that, as it's apparently an inheritable condition, David is one as well. Running home to warn him, they find a dog under the moonlight in the attic, leading everyone to think that David has become a dog. In truth, it was a random mongrel from around the corner, neither of them actually being werewolves at all.
• The Addams Family: In "My Son, the Chimp", Uncle Fester tries to do a magic trick which ends up creating an explosion that knocks his grand-nephew Pugsley into another room. At the same time, a chimpanzee unexpectedly arrives on the scene, and Fester is left believing his trick turned Pugsley into a chimp.
• In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Go Fish", Xander is exposed to a mutagenic drug that's been turning the swimming team into fishmen. Cordelia sees one of them, and thinks it's him, giving a tearful speech on how she's still his friend. Xander shows up, corrects her, and after a beat they both run off screaming.
• Doctor Who: In "The Day of the Doctor", the 10th Doctor is seeking out a shapeshifting Zygon in 16th-century England, and believes that it's currently posing as Queen Elizabeth. He decides to propose to her, believing that if she accepts, it'll prove that she's the Zygon, and his beliefs seem confirmed when she says yes. Unfortunately, it's actually their horse that's the Zygon, much to the Doctor's horror and mortification. Later, he gives a Badass Boast to what he thinks is the Zygon disguised as a rabbit, only to realize mid-boast that it's just an ordinary rabbit.
• Heroes: When Sylar acquires shapeshifting abilities, Noah Bennet holds a gun to his ex-wife's head thinking she might be him.
• In the Misfits series 2 pilot, the ASBO 5 find themselves up against Lucy, a shapeshifting Yandere out to get Simon away from the rest of the team and back to the psychiatric unit where they met. While trying to stop her, the team ends up mistaking their probation worker for Lucy and beating him to death — thankfully undone by Curtis' time-travel powers; later, after seeing Lucy transform into a mouse, Nathan finds a mouse in the locker room and squashes it in the belief that it's her, even presenting it to Simon... only to realize too late that it's the wrong mouse and he's actually talking to a disguised Lucy.
• Power Rangers Jungle Fury: In the episode "Friends Don't Fade Away", team mentor RJ has been having trouble with his Wolf Animal Spirit and transforming into an anthropomorphic wolf monster as a result. He eventually regains control with help from Fran (and soon after morphs into the Wolf Ranger for the first time), but later on, the other Rangers and Fran hear a noise coming from RJ's room, where they discover a wolf and mistakenly believe he's stuck in animal form again. A fully human RJ, who walks in on them talking to the canine, quickly corrects the error when he informs them that he was just dog-sitting.
• Red Dwarf:
  • In "Polymorph", the eponymous creature can shapeshift into just about anyone or anything while hunting for emotions to devour. Naturally, this results in a good deal of paranoia when the Dwarfers have to hunt it down, quickly leading to Rimmer panicking and having the others open fire on an ordinary shadow. Worse still, the bazookoids were set to heat-seeker, and Cat is forced to spend the next few minutes trying to outrun his own salvos.
  • "Emohawk: Polymorph II" features a domesticated Polymorph (known as an Emohawk) being sent after the crew by a tribe of GELFs they made the mistake of pissing off, resulting in even more paranoia. Late in the episode, Lister shoots at a barrel and a chain in the belief that they were the Emohawk; Kryten tries to reassure him that he's just being paranoid, only to panic and claim that the Emohawk is the wall. In truth, it's actually one of the thermoses that the Cat/Duane Dibley is holding.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • Exploited in "The Storyteller." Because Odo needs to periodically revert to his liquid state and sleep in a bucket, so Nog pulls a prank on Jake and Varis by stealing the bucket, filling it with oatmeal, putting it back, and "accidentally" spilling the oatmeal onto Jake - leaving Jake with the impression that he's just gotten the liquefied Odo all over him.
    • In "The Search Part 2," the visit to Odo's home planet goes slightly off-kilter when his fellow Changelings begin teaching him advanced shapeshifting techniques while Kira is busy with the runabout. Consequently, Kira returns to find the landing site seemingly deserted; with none of the other Changelings interested in speaking to her or even revealing themselves, she's left talking to random plants and other inanimate objects in the dim hope that one of them might be Odo. As it turns out, he's none of them - he's actually testing out his flying skills as a bird.
    • "Business As Usual" features Quark getting into the arms trade so he can pay off his debts. Knowing that Odo wouldn't approve of this venture, Quark is quickly reduced to checking the barstools just in case one of them might be a disguised Changeling, even taking the glass out of Gaila's hand and dipping his finger in it. Gaila exasperatedly reminds him that they saw Odo walking down the promenade just five minutes ago - not that this helps Quark's paranoia in the slightest.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise:
    • Toward the end of "Storm Front", Trip holds Captain Archer at gunpoint, believing him to be Silik in disguise. Justified as he thought Archer was dead.
    • In "Vanishing Point", when Hoshi turns invisible and intangible after a Teleporter Accident, everyone else believes that she's dead. So when a puddle of goo is found, they believe she turned into goo, when she didn't. And then, it turns out that the whole episode was all a hallucination.
• Worzel Gummidge: In one episode, John and Sue are looking for Worzel the sentient scarecrow when they find a rabbit sitting under his hat — leaving Sue with the impression that Worzel has been turned into a rabbit.

Manhua

• An Old Master Q strip has Master Q babysitting for a neighbor when the child wets his pants. As Master Q tries finding diapers, the child wanders off while dropping a lollipop he's eating, just as a monkey passes by and took the lollipop. Leading to an exasperated Master Q trying to tell the mother that the child has inexplicably transformed into a monkey.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street: When Abby the fairy tries to cast a spell at the same time as Maria leaves the area and a chicken arrives of the scene, Abby thinks that she's turned Maria into the chicken.

Radio

• Late in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the heroes make the mistake of stealing the flagship of a Haggunenon war fleet, eventually being led right to the head of the armada by automated systems and hailed for orders. As luck would have it, the Haggunenons are so Perpetually Protean that when Zaphod answers the call, the Haggunenon officer on the other end just assumes that he's the admiral of the fleet in a new form; when Trillian answers the next call, the officer believes that she's also the admiral in another form and thinks nothing of it. Unfortunately, the admiral is already aboard, disguised as the pilot's chair.

Theatre

• A Very Potter Sequel: When the Marauders Map reveals Peter Pettigrew is in the same room as them, the gang assumes that he must be disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers, since he is the only other creature in the room. ^note  The audience generally assumes the same thing, since this was the twist of the original novel. The group crushes Scabbers to death, only to discover that Pettigrew was actually disguised as a Taylor Lautner poster.

Toys

• One of the Monster High webisodes involves Draculaura trying to turn into a bat. She fails, but her friends mistake a random bat for a transformed Draculaura.
• Transformers: Since the toyline's tagline is "Robots in Disguise", this naturally comes up a few times over the course of the franchise.
  • In the episode "Auto Berserk" of the G1 Sunbow cartoon, the Autobot security directory Red Alert suffers damage to his logic circuits that turn him into a paranoid wreck (well, more than usual). During the Autobots' attempts to track him down before the damage becomes fatal, Ironhide sees Red Alert in his alternate mode (a Lamborghini customised for use by fire departments) and grabs him, begging him to see reason and come back with him. A fire chief shortly comes up and demands Ironhide unhand his official vehicle. A sheepish Ironhide complies.
  • In Marvel Comics' Transformers Megatron had a psychotic break following the death of Optimus Prime ^note  the infamous occasion where Optimus ordered himself killed for allowing virtual people in a game to die in order to defeat Megatron, something he'd never have condoned in real life , and began seeing any red trucks as actually being Optimus in disguise and started attacking them.
  • In one of the commercials for the Generation 2 toyline, a child walks up a truck, telling Optimus how awesome he is. A second truck behind him transforms into Optimus, telling the kid, "Er... over here."
  • In an episode of Beast Wars, the Predacons notice a white tiger observing them and attack it, believing it to be the Maximal Tigatron in disguise. It wasn't, but that didn't stop them from killing the poor creature.
  • In Transformers: Escalation, Ratchet hides from Sixshot in a hospital parking lot. Not knowing which ambulance is the Autobot, Sixshot just starts destroying them one by one.

Video Games

• Exploited in Knights of the Old Republic: one mission features Dark Side players being tasked with hunting down the shapeshifting assassin Rulan Prolik in the Shadowlands of Kashyyyk. After being soundly defeated in two of his forms over the course of the boss fight, Rulan transforms into a tach — a small monkey-like creature — and flees the area... and as bad luck would have it, tachs are incredibly commonplace on Kashyyyk and gather in large packs, so you have no way of knowing which one of them is actually Rulan until you've killed it. Then again, true Dark Side players will have no moral qualms about butchering the entire pack until one of them transforms back...
• The crux of Prop Hunt is a timed mission in which a team of hunters have to find and kill the members of the opposing team, who all have the power to mimic the shape of objects around the map. As such, it's very common for hunters to mistake real props for disguised players and open fire, to no avail — though it's important not to make this mistake too many times: hunter players lose HP for every attack that doesn't hit an enemy player.
• In the Team Fortress 2 "Meet The Spy" promotional short, the BLU Soldier kills BLU Spy in the belief that he's actually the RED Spy in disguise. He was wrong; RED Spy is currently disguised as the BLU Scout, and uses the ensuing confusion to kill both Soldier and Heavy.

Web Comics

• Clan of the Cats: After Chelsea transforms and runs off in "Bringing Up Chelsea", Cynthia goes looking for her and stumbles across an actual panther named Othello hiding out under the lodge building. (Said panther escaped from a local's sanctuary at the start of the story.) Thanks to her mistaking Othello for Chelsea, Cynthia is unafraid of him - up until panther!Chelsea returns. After she realizes that she's been dealing with an actual panther, Cynthia faints.

Web Videos

• The Onion features a case of this in the video "Hot New Relationship Book Warns Women: 'Wake Up! He's A Shapeshifter.'" Here, a relationship expert warns women who have had a long string of dodgy boyfriends that they have actually been dating one deceitful shapeshifter with extreme commitment issues, when it's far more likely that the women in question have just been unlucky in love.

Western Animation

• Adventures of the Gummi Bears: In "A Gummi is a Gummi’s Best Friend" Gusto sculpts a statue in Zummi's likeness; when Gruffi finds it he believes one of Zummi's spells has gone wrong, turning him into stone. Lady Bane also finds the statue and mistakes it for Zummi, leading to Gruffi having to sneak into her home and rescue what he thinks is his petrified friend.
• A variant in Adventure Time: during "Beyond This Earthly Realm", Finn is absorbed by a special porcelain lamb; Jake correctly believes that the lamb is responsible for Finn's current state, but he seems to think Finn has actually become the lamb, rather than it keeping him in the astral plane.
• In The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Wish" has Gumball and Darwin thinking that their wish transformed Miss Simian into a neck pillow.
• American Dad!: In "Finances with Wolves", Steve gets bitten by a wolf and believes he'll turn into a werewolf. Later that night, the same wolf, whom Roger had been secretly keeping as a pet, viciously kills a puppy and makes a bloody mess in Steve's room; when he wakes up the next morning, he finds himself covered in blood with paw prints everywhere, and he thinks it was himself in werewolf form.
• In the American Dragon: Jake Long episode "Magic Enemy Number 1", Jake ends up getting so paranoid over all the bounty hunters trying to kill Professor Rotwood that he becomes convinced that Rotwood's sandwich is actually a hunter in disguise — and proceeds to beat it up.
• One episode of Beverly Hills Teens has the heroes mistake a trio of piglets for triplet toddlers transformed by one of Chester's inventions.
• Classic Disney Shorts: In Don's Fountain of Youth, Donald Duck pranks his nephews by wading in a spring that was mistaken for the "fountain of youth" and wearing on a baby bonnet, making them think he'd aged down into a baby. He then goes one step further by taking a crocodile's egg and putting the bonnet on it to make it look like he's become unhatched.
• Dennis the Menace (1986): "Dennis Rocks Out" begins with Dennis and Tommy performing a magic show that has a trick where Tommy turns Dennis into a rock, or so it would appear. However, the magic show ends prematurely when Tommy's mother calls Tommy back to his house for lunch, and Dennis leaves as well, not wanting to miss his own lunch. Joey spends the rest of the episode believing that Dennis really has turned into a rock, and trying to turn him back into a human.
• In the Fairly OddParents episode "Sleepover and Over", Timmy hatches a plan to help Chester and AJ become friends again by having Cosmo and Wanda transform into junkyard dogs and pretend to attack him, forcing Chester and AJ to work together to save him. When a pair of actual junkyard dogs approach him, Timmy assumes they're just his fairies in disguise until he sees Cosmo and Wanda goofing off elsewhere and realises they're real.
• Gargoyles: In the show, all Gargoyles automatically turn to stone from sunrise to sundown. In the episode "The Price", Xanatos kidnaps Hudson while he's hibernating in stone and replaces him with a statue in his likeness, allowing him to use Hudson for the purpose of creating a magic potion while the other Gargoyles and Elisa are distracted on trying to turn what they think is Hudson back to normal.
• Generator Rex: In the episode "Lions and Lambs", Breach uses her enhanced portal-conjuring abilities to pull a T. rex into the present day. Rex doesn't know Breach's powers now allow her to bring things through time and thinks it's just another bestial EVO (a human or animal turned into a monster by nanites). He realizes it's an actual dinosaur when he tries to bring it down to normal and it has no effect.
• The Harlem Globetrotters: In the debut episode, "The Great Geese Goof-Up", a mixup in hospital room numbers and some Out-of-Context Eavesdropping lead Meadowlark and Curly to believe that a magician transformed Geese into a kangaroo.
• Johnny Bravo: In "The Hansel & Gretel Project", Johnny, Carl and Susie search for The Witch from Hansel and Gretel; after Carl scouts ahead and the other two come across her gingerbread cottage, Johnny finds a life-size Gingerbread cookie in Carl's likeness and sadly mourns over his lost friend, while ripping off and eating his arms and head. The real Carl approaches him a few seconds later.
• Kim Possible: In "The Full Monkey", Kim gets zapped by an amulet that slowly turns her into a monkey. After she is captured by Monkey Fist, one of his monkeys named Chippy puts on an outfit of hers and is found by Ron, who thinks Kim has completely turned.
• The Little Rascals: In "Alfalfakazam!", after Alfalfa is sent away from Spanky's magic show in search of a rabbit, he gets caught in the snare the boys set up earlier. After Spanky finds a rabbit in the booth where Alfalfa was, he and the other Rascals think the rabbit is Alfalfa. Not until they're surrounded by rabbits do they find Alfalfa in the snare.
• Looney Tunes: In Hare Remover, Elmer Fudd creates a potion to transform a friendly little animal into a "DEVIWISH FIEND!" After capturing Bugs Bunny, he and Elmer are visited by a bear, who happens to run into Bugs after he's learned about the potion and Elmer has left him alone briefly... whereupon Bugs mistakes the bear for a transformed Elmer, and tries to "cure" him by feeding him an ineffective antidote. When it doesn't work, Bugs legs it - and then Elmer finds the bear, and assumes it's a transformed Bugs. He tries to cure it as well, but this time the bear is not in the mood.
• The Loud House: In "The Spies Who Loved Me", when Ronnie Anne's family tries to track her, the tracking chip ends up on a rat, leaving them following it for a while instead. When they catch up and see the results, Rosa is convinced that Ronnie Anne has actually turned into a rat.
• The Mask: "Little Big Mask" features the Mask testing an anti-aging cream on himself, but both he and Stanley Ipkiss suffer a downward spiral of regression as a result. After taking the now-infant Mask to the hospital, Peggy wakes up to find that his enclosure is deserted except for empty baby clothes — leading her to tearfully assume that Stanley has regressed out of existence altogether and the clothes are all that's left of him. Fortunately, it turns out that one of the doctors just removed Stanley from the room for a quick check-up and he's exactly the same age he was the last time she saw him (sans Mask).
• Downplayed in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Times They Are a Changeling". A Changeling spy has infiltrated the Crystal Empire and Twilight is mistaken for the Changeling in disguise by Cadance and Shining Armor; Cadance then proceeds to do the Secret Handshake from when she was Twilight's foalsitter to prove that's really Twilight. Twilight immediately joins in, and everypony calms down.
• Plastic Man: in the episode "Untouchable", a group of criminals meet to discuss Plastic Man and how he has thwarted their fellow criminals with his shapeshifting powers. The conference soon goes awry as the criminals get paranoid about any objects in the room that might match Plastic Man's distinctive red and yellow costume, especially once they realize that in several cases their own clothes match the color scheme; the entire thing degenerates into a massive brawl as the gangsters try to destroy the offending objects or beat the living daylights out of each other. Ironically, Plastic Man slept in and missed the entire meeting he was supposed to stake out.
• Rugrats (1991):
  • In "Tommy's First Birthday", Tommy wants to eat dog food after seeing a commercial for it on television, believing it will turn him into a dog. He tells his friends this, and they agree to help him get some, as they want to be dogs as well. At one point, when Tommy's friends see Spike, Tommy's pet dog, they think that Tommy's plan worked and Tommy has become a dog. After Spike leaves, the babies find Tommy sitting sadly near Spike's empty food bowl. When Chuckie tells Tommy that he changed back from being a dog, Tommy tells him that he never turned into a dog, as Spike ate all his dog food before he could get the chance to eat it himself.
  • In "Angelica the Magnificent", Angelica does some magic tricks, at one point attempting a disappearing act by putting Lil in a cardboard box and having her go out the other end as she says the magic words. Because Lil chases a butterfly, and another one flies into the box as Angelica says the magic words, Angelica and the boys believe that Angelica turned Lil into a butterfly.
  • In "When Wishes Come True", Tommy wishes that the worst thing ever would happen to Angelica. When he and his friends see a statue of her, they believe she turned into stone.
  • In "Dil We Meet Again", Betty jokingly tells Dil that if he keeps eating watermelons, he will turn into one. Later, Dil disappears and Tommy and his friends believe that a watermelon is a transmogrified Dil.
  • In "Hello Dilly", Angelica shows the babies her new baby doll, which bears a striking resemblance to Dil. She tells the babies that the doll was once a baby, but got turned into a doll by a fairy godmother because it behaved badly. The next morning, following a visit from Aunt Miriam in a cowgirl costume and Angelica taking Dil with her to preschool to one-up one of her classmates, Angelica leaves her baby doll in Dil's crib, which results in the babies thinking that Dil really did turn into a doll.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: "Scooby Doo and a Mummy, Too" features a Mummy that can supposedly turn you into stone by casting its shadow on you, of course it's a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax done with some quick drying mold cement. Shaggy comes across a Scooby statue thinking it's Scooby and hugs it sadly, then the real Scooby approaches and joins him in his mourning.
  • In The Scooby-Doo Show episode "The Ozark Witch Switch", Scooby and his friends think that the ghost of Witch McCoy changed the Hatfield family into frogs. Later, Scooby thinks that Shaggy and Velma were turned into frogs. Fortunately, all were still human.
  • What's New, Scooby-Doo?: In "The Vampire Strikes Back", Shaggy and Scooby meet a friendly bat and think that it's Fred, who was captured by the titular vampire earlier. It isn't until they see Fred later that they realise it's just a normal bat.
• Played for stupidity in The Simpsons episode "Bart Gets Famous" when Bart sneaks out of a field trip to the box factory. Homer investigates only to discover a cardboard box with Bart's cap perched on it.
  Homer: *bawls* He's a box! My boy's a box! (Skyward Scream) DAMN YOU! A BOX!
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Hocus Pocus", SpongeBob has just bought a magic kit and tries to show Squidward a card trick. While SpongeBob has his eyes closed, Squidward leaves and a kid happens to drop his pistachio ice-cream cone on the spot where Squidward was standing. When SpongeBob opens his eyes, he thinks he has turned Squidward into an ice-cream cone.
• Steven Universe: Other gems tend to assume that Steven is a transformed Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond because he has her gem in his body. One Whole Episode Flashback shows the Crystal Gems trying to get baby Steven to "turn back" into Rose. It goes on so long that even Steven himself starts to doubt if he really is his own person or just another manifestation of his mother. The matter is finally resolved in "Change Your Mind" when White Diamond removes the gem from Steven and instead of Pink Diamond or Rose Quartz, it turns into another Steven, who outright states that Pink is "gone".
• Teen Titans: In "Every Dog Has His Day", a green alien dog-shaped creature is mistaken for a shapeshifted Beast Boy.
• T.U.F.F. Puppy: In "Doom-Mates", Dudley finds out about the Chameleon, an escaped criminal who wants revenge on Kitty for sending him to Petropolis Prison. Kewsick informs Dudley that the Chameleon wears a high-tech transformation suit which can allow him to transform into anything. The Chief assigns Dudley to protect Kitty at her house, but due to Dudley's extreme stupidity, he keeps mistaking Kitty and her prized possessions for the Chameleon in disguise and zapping them with his blaster.
• Winnie the Pooh:
  • My Friends Tigger & Pooh: In "Christopher Froggin", Christopher Robin leaves his pet frog to guard the stuff in his "treasure box", and it hops off wearing the friendship bracelet that Darby made for him. Meanwhile, Darby is playing a game in which she's a fairy trying to turn "Prince" Buster into a frog, and when sees the frog with the bracelet, Darby believes she turned Christopher Robin into a frog by mistake.
  • The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: In "Groundpiglet Day", Piglet loses his winter hat while walking through the snow. Soon after, Rabbit comes across a little snowman wearing it and assumes that Piglet has frozen up. Fortunately, he appears and clears everything up... after everyone else thought "Piglet" had melted into a puddle.
    Pooh: Oh no! If that's Piglet, then who is this?!
    Tigger: Kinda resembles Eeyore, around the eyes.

---